Brainstorm Podcast

Prayer in Schools with Dusti Hennenfent

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Hi and welcome to the brainstorm podcast. This is
episode 39 and today is January 22, 2016. I’m Cory and my panel
tonight are Destin, Rene, Lana, and Leo with the ever amazing Dave
doing sound here in Roman Empire studios in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Tonight we have a special guest in studio Dusti Hennenfent, the mom
who is trying to get her kids school to stop playing the very
Christian Lord’s prayer over the loudspeaker.

Commercial break-patreon, absence of clothing, and
The Reality Check promo

Argumentum ad lapidem (Latin: "to the stone") is
a logical
fallacy that consists in dismissing a statement as absurd
without giving proof of its absurdity.[1] The
form of argument employed by such dismissals is
the argumentum ad lapidem,
or appeal to the stone.[2][3]

Ad lapidem statements are fallacious because they
fail to address the merits of the claim in dispute. The same
applies to proof by
assertion, where an unproved or disproved claim is asserted as
true on no ground other than that of its truth having been
asserted.

Related to proof by assertion or proof by repeated
assertion

Proof by assertion, sometimes informally
referred to as proof by repeated assertion,
is an informal
fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated
regardless of contradiction.[1] Sometimes,
this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is
asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum
ad nauseam).[2] In
other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth,
in a variant of the appeal to
authority or appeal to
belief fallacies.[citation
needed]

This fallacy is sometimes used as a form of rhetoric by
politicians, or during a debate as a filibuster. In its
extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing.[1] Modern
politics contains many examples of proof by assertions. This
practice can be observed in the use of political slogans, and the
distribution of "talking points",
which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members
of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum
message repetition. The technique is also sometimes used in
advertising.

Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological
positions, and forms of organization. Within Judaism there are a
variety of movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic
Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws
and commandmentsto Moses on Mount
Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral
Torah.[6] Historically,
this assertion was challenged by various groups such as
the Sadducees and Hellenistic
Judaism during the Second Temple
period; the Karaites and Sabbateans during
the early and later medieval period;[7] and
among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Modern
branches of Judaism such as Humanistic
Judaism may be nontheistic.[8] Today,
the largest Jewish
religious movements are Orthodox
Judaism (Haredi
Judaism and Modern
Orthodox Judaism), Conservative
Judaism and Reform Judaism.
Major sources of difference between these groups are their
approaches to Jewish law, the
authority of the Rabbinic
tradition, and the significance of the State of
Israel.[9]Orthodox
Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in
origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly
followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with
Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more "traditional"
interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A
typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a
set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and
obligations whose observance is required of all Jews.[10][11] Historically, special
courts enforced Jewish law; today, these courts still
exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary.[12] Authority
on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or
organization, but in the sacred texts andrabbis and scholars
who interpret them.[13]

Jews are an ethnoreligious
group[21] and
include those born Jewish and converts to
Judaism. In 2012, the world
Jewish populationwas estimated at about 14 million, or roughly
0.2% of the total world population.[22] About
42% of all Jews reside in Israel and another
42% reside in North America, with most of the remainder living in
Europe, and other minority groups spread throughout South America,
Asia, Africa, and Australia.[23]

So that’s where we’re going to end the episode. We’ll record a
little bit longer for the patreon page but you can join us for the
next live broadcast by watching for our events on
mixlr.com/the-brainstorm-podcast. That link, along with many other
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Thanks to Dave for our intro music, thanks to Alix Capper Murdoch
for doing the voice over for the intro and for some of our ads, and
thank you to Jason Comeau for our outro music. You can find his
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About the Podcast

The Brainstorm podcast is Saskatchewan's first skeptic and atheist podcast. An eclectic group of local skeptics discuss a variety of topics relating to science, skepticism, religion and politics while having a few drinks and a few laughs.